James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule was an interesting man that may not have had the conventional way of coming into physics. Joule had a relation with Lord Kelvin who is also another famous figure in physics. It was when he was young that he and his brother went to Dalton to be tutored, from these lessons Joule became one of the premier scientists of his age. These teachings are what made him one of the most exact measurement takers of his day. Joule also had an interest in brewing in his earlier years. This affinity comes from his father who owned a brewery. This brewing hobby becomes Joules first time to use physics. Making all of his machines and devices more efficient is where his skills for physics came to shine. In doing this his studies with energy began.[1]
Insight and Influences
As a boy Joule was from Salford and was home-schooled until he was the age of about sixteen, this was because he had a hard time in regular schools of his age. It is believed that most of Joule's education was self administered. This shows his passion for acquiring knowledge and conducing his various experiments and investigations. Joule and his brother, Benjamin, studied under John Dalton who was a professor at Manchester University and was the president of Literary and also the Philosophical Society. After Dalton was struck with an illness Joule inherited a lot of his work. A room his house was set back just for his laboratory investigations, and experiments. This was when he started to dabble into the idea of eletrico-magnetics.[2]
Joule was a very bright young man, so a lot of his early interests and influences included steam engines and brewing. His interests in trains lead him to studies of thermodynamics. In some of his earlier experiments when he was "messing around", he inadvertently shocked and knocked out one of his servants. This is when he ended those type of tests. He did work in his father's brewery, and wanted to make his machines better, this is also where he did a lot of his early works.[3]
Joule was not just a man of work even though in the perspective of most he could be seen as one. A lot of what shows that he was not just working all the time was that in 1847 he was married to Amelia Grimes. Although he did spend most of his honeymoon in the Alps studding the nature of a waterfall. Joule observed that the water at the temperature at the peak of the fall was cooler than the water at the bottom. This led him to believe that the water was heated from the movement of the water down the ledge. This was significant to his hypothesis of heat conservation. Later he also had children, a son Benjamin Author and a Daughter Alice Amelia. In 1854 Joule was struck with a tragedy when his son and his wife passed away, so Joule stayed a widower for the rest of his time.
Joule also assumed work as an investigator and took it upon himself to read papers and various accounts of experiments. Now there is known to be ninety- seven papers in the name of Mr. Joule, and twenty or so of which were revisions of other researchers’ papers. In his early works he experimented in magnetism. He worked on an electo-magnetic engine, and also wrote a paper for the discoveries that he made on this investigation. Joule wrote many of these papers on magnetic electricity, and also investigated a unit electricity current. In one of his lectures at Manchester University he unveiled an electro-magnetic motor that was very close to working. At the end of that presentation he admitted that this was probably not the best that could be done on that experiment. Later he was granted awards from the university that he lectured at.[4]
Major Contributions
This electro- magnetic engine turned out to be the first in Joule's many larger works in physics. It was the first cornerstone of his success. It was on this
image courtesy of making the mordern world
work he was angry and confused about his units which drove him to find a new one. This unit was to be easier and was discovered by the relation of heat with current running through it. Joule wrote a paper of his experiments, all of which happened around 1840. In a stretch of about four years a scientist named William Thompson found truth in Joule's work. When Mr. Thompson finally got behind Joules word is the same time society started to appreciate Joule's brilliance. He quickly also gained approval of Michael Faraday, another widely known figure in physics. This was an importand event in his track to become the founder of the SI unit of energy.[5]
The relationship between Joule and Thompson first arose when they took the same experiments and did them together. This relationship was later shown to be one of the most important of his time. The first thing they did together was show relation between heat and mechanical work. They also took work on thermal effects on fluid motion, and on heat made by bodies through the air. They discovered the heat created by a figure traveling at one mile per second through the air sufficient to account for its ignition.
Joule was also the first known to introduce thermodynamics, and was first to demonstrate it. He showed that work can be converted as heat with a ratio of one to the other, and work can be made into heat. His works on the conservation of heat is put into the first part of the first law of thermodynamics. This law says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transformed. Joule wrote the Phenomena of Nature, chemical, mechanical, or vital is just a transformation of one to another.[6]
Joule was also known as an inventor next to his status as a physicist. He made a device called the electrical welding and displacement pump. He first experimented with a bundle of wires in some charcoal. He welded them by sending an electric current through them which heated them. This was the first time heating by internal resistance was put into use by welding. In more of his discoveries he also did work on the chemical reaction of the battery, he did this by applying his principles of temperature changing from the arising gaseous substances. He lowered a small pump into water all inside a cylinder of gun metal and with a piston with a plug fitted with oil leather. This device was a pump that he made from this he could very accurately measure temperatures. This was the device that aided him on his studies of the free expansion of gasses. With this he adds being the first to use a small needle in a tangent galvanometer, which was an invention of his own. The galvanometer was the device that Joule used to mesure electric currents. This device turned out to be very useful in his mission to find a ulit of energy. After all of this the Royal Society accepted what Joule had found in his workings. Following this the SI unit for energy was named after him to account for all of his hard work.[7]
Affect and Effect
His father, Benjamin Joule was the first thing that got Joule interested in physics was his father and his brewery. He was home schooled or tutored at home until he was about the age of sixteen. His father was also a major impact in the point that he helped him get the wonderful teacher that he had. His father also gave him a room, his own place to conduct experiments. From his fathers brewing he became a manager of that brewery and was a large help in sales. This is where he gained his hobby of physics, because of the experiments he executed when trying to improve his machines' effectiveness.[8] He once said about his experiments that, "the difficulty, if not impossibility, of understanding experiments and comparing them with one another, which arises in general from incomplete descriptions of apparatus, and from the arbitrary and vague numbers which are used to characterize electric currents. Such a practice," he says, "might be tolerated in the infancy of science; but in its present state of advancement greater precision and propriety are imperatively demanded. I have therefore determined," he continues, "for my own part to abandon my old quantity numbers, and to express my results on the basis of a unit which shall be at once scientific and convenient."[9]
The man that his father convinced to teach Joule and his brother was John Dalton. They had learned about two years' worth of geometry and math when Dalton was struck with a stroke and passed away. Dalton's influence however lived on in Joule's life forever learning from Dalton to be very important in his measurements and calculations. After his tutors passing Joule was then tutored by a man named John Davis.
Joule also had important relationships with other scientists one of the biggest being William Thompson (Lord Kelvin).Thompson helped Joule on his way to becoming a staple in science history by supporting his theory that energy needed a new unit, which was what ultimately made the Royal Society change the unit of measurement of energy, they now also to this day have ninety- seven highly thought out research papers due to Joule. They also became to be close on their work with temperature and expanding gasses. What they discovered later became known as the Joule-Thompson effect which is now the framework on such devices as the refrigerator and air-conditioning units. Along with Thompson another one of Joules' great supporters for his unit of measurement was Michael Faraday. Faraday read his papers and thought he was brilliant and quickly leant his opinion. Almost immediately after gaining his support this man he was awarded his unit of measurement.
Thanks to Joule we today have a better standard unit of energy. We also have a better motor engine in spite of his work with them; this was mainly seen in his improvement of the steam engine. He also had effects on things that people may not know such as welding. We gained a better understanding of heat and the way in works to make mechanical instruments go the way that they do.
Legacy
Joule was known for many things but there are some above all. One of these things, also known to be his greatest achievement, is the unit that he created for energy that was chosen to be the SI unit for energy. People today use this in science a great amount and are in debt to all of joules hard work. He also was known for finding the relationship between heat, electricity, and magnetism. From that he also came to the conclusion of Joule's Law, which has a lot to do with the principle of the law of conservation of energy. Joule is also known very popularly for the Joule-Thompson effect. One of his most well known experiments is the paddle wheel experiment which helped him understand the conservation of energy. He also is known for founding the "arc" or welding process and a displacement pump.[9]
Joule's relationship with Kelvin led to the absolute zero scale which was a breakthrough in the temperature scale. This scale is now named absolute temperature. Joule also did work with Thompson to discover the kinetic theory. It made him one of the first scientists to give a number to the speed of molecules. This also has to do with gas particles having continuous random motion. Joule was a firm believer in the atomic theory because of his teacher John Dalton. All of Joule's hard work paid off eventually when the caloric theory of heat was thrown out, because what Joule had done had helped the natural process of science progress. Joule was also a firm believer in god even though he dealt with scientific works he devoted all of his work in this religious manner. In knowing this science, in his time, may not have been seen as the most religious thing to participate in. “Joule saw the beauty and harmony of nature and its underlying laws as God's handiwork” [11]. After all of this work in his lifetime the British government granted him a two hundred pound pension of sterling for what ever his use was. This was all because of his modest work of his measurement of energy. Joule's gravestone is even inscribed with the words and phrases of "772.55," his climatic mesurement of the mechanical equivalent of heat, also a scripture from the Gospel of John chapter nine verse three and it shows exactly what philosophy he had and what kind of man he was, it says, "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: The night cometh, when no man can work." This all proves that Joule was a man of great work and took value in what he did. [10]
James Prescott Joule was an interesting man that may not have had the conventional way of coming into physics. Joule had a relation with Lord Kelvin who is also another famous figure in physics. It was when he was young that he and his brother went to Dalton to be tutored, from these lessons Joule became one of the premier scientists of his age. These teachings are what made him one of the most exact measurement takers of his day. Joule also had an interest in brewing in his earlier years. This affinity comes from his father who owned a brewery. This brewing hobby becomes Joules first time to use physics. Making all of his machines and devices more efficient is where his skills for physics came to shine. In doing this his studies with energy began.[1]
Insight and Influences
As a boy Joule was from Salford and was home-schooled until he was the age of about sixteen, this was because he had a hard time in regular schools of his age. It is believed that most of Joule's education was self administered. This shows his passion for acquiring knowledge and conducing his various experiments and investigations. Joule and his brother, Benjamin, studied under John Dalton who was a professor at Manchester University and was the president of Literary and also the Philosophical Society. After Dalton was struck with an illness Joule inherited a lot of his work. A room his house was set back just for his laboratory investigations, and experiments. This was when he started to dabble into the idea of eletrico-magnetics.[2]
Joule was a very bright young man, so a lot of his early interests and influences included steam engines and brewing. His interests in trains lead him to studies of thermodynamics. In some of his earlier experiments when he was "messing around", he inadvertently shocked and knocked out one of his servants. This is when he ended those type of tests. He did work in his father's brewery, and wanted to make his machines better, this is also where he did a lot of his early works.[3]
Joule was not just a man of work even though in the perspective of most he could be seen as one. A lot of what shows that he was not just working all the time was that in 1847 he was married to Amelia Grimes. Although he did spend most of his honeymoon in the Alps studding the nature of a waterfall. Joule observed that the water at the temperature at the peak of the fall was cooler than the water at the bottom. This led him to believe that the water was heated from the movement of the water down the ledge. This was significant to his hypothesis of heat conservation. Later he also had children, a son Benjamin Author and a Daughter Alice Amelia. In 1854 Joule was struck with a tragedy when his son and his wife passed away, so Joule stayed a widower for the rest of his time.
Joule also assumed work as an investigator and took it upon himself to read papers and various accounts of experiments. Now there is known to be ninety- seven papers in the name of Mr. Joule, and twenty or so of which were revisions of other researchers’ papers. In his early works he experimented in magnetism. He worked on an electo-magnetic engine, and also wrote a paper for the discoveries that he made on this investigation. Joule wrote many of these papers on magnetic electricity, and also investigated a unit electricity current. In one of his lectures at Manchester University he unveiled an electro-magnetic motor that was very close to working. At the end of that presentation he admitted that this was probably not the best that could be done on that experiment. Later he was granted awards from the university that he lectured at.[4]
Major Contributions
This electro- magnetic engine turned out to be the first in Joule's many larger works in physics. It was the first cornerstone of his success. It was on this
The relationship between Joule and Thompson first arose when they took the same experiments and did them together. This relationship was later shown to be one of the most important of his time. The first thing they did together was show relation between heat and mechanical work. They also took work on thermal effects on fluid motion, and on heat made by bodies through the air. They discovered the heat created by a figure traveling at one mile per second through the air sufficient to account for its ignition.
Joule was also the first known to introduce thermodynamics, and was first to demonstrate it. He showed that work can be converted as heat with a ratio of one to the other, and work can be made into heat. His works on the conservation of heat is put into the first part of the first law of thermodynamics. This law says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transformed. Joule wrote the Phenomena of Nature, chemical, mechanical, or vital is just a transformation of one to another.[6]
Joule was also known as an inventor next to his status as a physicist. He made a device called the electrical welding and displacement pump. He first experimented with a bundle of wires in some charcoal. He welded them by sending an electric current through them which heated them. This was the first time heating by internal resistance was put into use by welding. In more of his discoveries he also did work on the chemical reaction of the battery, he did this by applying his principles of temperature changing from the arising gaseous substances. He lowered a small pump into water all inside a cylinder of gun metal and with a piston with a plug fitted with oil leather. This device was a pump that he made from this he could very accurately measure temperatures. This was the device that aided him on his studies of the free expansion of gasses. With this he adds being the first to use a small needle in a tangent galvanometer, which was an invention of his own. The galvanometer was the device that Joule used to mesure electric currents. This device turned out to be very useful in his mission to find a ulit of energy. After all of this the Royal Society accepted what Joule had found in his workings. Following this the SI unit for energy was named after him to account for all of his hard work.[7]
Affect and Effect
His father, Benjamin Joule was the first thing that got Joule interested in physics was his father and his brewery. He was home schooled or tutored at home until he was about the age of sixteen. His father was also a major impact in the point that he helped him get the wonderful teacher that he had. His father also gave him a room, his own place to conduct experiments. From his fathers brewing he became a manager of that brewery and was a large help in sales. This is where he gained his hobby of physics, because of the experiments he executed when trying to improve his machines' effectiveness.[8] He once said about his experiments that, "the difficulty, if not impossibility, of understanding experiments and comparing them with one another, which arises in general from incomplete descriptions of apparatus, and from the arbitrary and vague numbers which are used to characterize electric currents. Such a practice," he says, "might be tolerated in the infancy of science; but in its present state of advancement greater precision and propriety are imperatively demanded. I have therefore determined," he continues, "for my own part to abandon my old quantity numbers, and to express my results on the basis of a unit which shall be at once scientific and convenient."[9]
The man that his father convinced to teach Joule and his brother was John Dalton. They had learned about two years' worth of geometry and math when Dalton was struck with a stroke and passed away. Dalton's influence however lived on in Joule's life forever learning from Dalton to be very important in his measurements and calculations. After his tutors passing Joule was then tutored by a man named John Davis.
Joule also had important relationships with other scientists one of the biggest being William Thompson (Lord Kelvin).Thompson helped Joule on his way to becoming a staple in science history by supporting his theory that energy needed a new unit, which was what ultimately made the Royal Society change the unit of measurement of energy, they now also to this day have ninety- seven highly thought out research papers due to Joule. They also became to be close on their work with temperature and expanding gasses. What they discovered later became known as the Joule-Thompson effect which is now the framework on such devices as the refrigerator and air-conditioning units. Along with Thompson another one of Joules' great supporters for his unit of measurement was Michael Faraday. Faraday read his papers and thought he was brilliant and quickly leant his opinion. Almost immediately after gaining his support this man he was awarded his unit of measurement.
Thanks to Joule we today have a better standard unit of energy. We also have a better motor engine in spite of his work with them; this was mainly seen in his improvement of the steam engine. He also had effects on things that people may not know such as welding. We gained a better understanding of heat and the way in works to make mechanical instruments go the way that they do.
Legacy
Joule was known for many things but there are some above all. One of these things, also known to be his greatest achievement, is the unit that he created for energy that was chosen to be the SI unit for energy. People today use this in science a great amount and are in debt to all of joules hard work. He also was known for finding the relationship between heat, electricity, and magnetism. From that he also came to the conclusion of Joule's Law, which has a lot to do with the principle of the law of conservation of energy. Joule is also known very popularly for the Joule-Thompson effect. One of his most well known experiments is the paddle wheel experiment which helped him understand the conservation of energy. He also is known for founding the "arc" or welding process and a displacement pump.[9]
Joule's relationship with Kelvin led to the absolute zero scale which was a breakthrough in the temperature scale. This scale is now named absolute temperature. Joule also did work with Thompson to discover the kinetic theory. It made him one of the first scientists to give a number to the speed of molecules. This also has to do with gas particles having continuous random motion. Joule was a firm believer in the atomic theory because of his teacher John Dalton. All of Joule's hard work paid off eventually when the caloric theory of heat was thrown out, because what Joule had done had helped the natural process of science progress. Joule was also a firm believer in god even though he dealt with scientific works he devoted all of his work in this religious manner. In knowing this science, in his time, may not have been seen as the most religious thing to participate in. “Joule saw the beauty and harmony of nature and its underlying laws as God's handiwork” [11]. After all of this work in his lifetime the British government granted him a two hundred pound pension of sterling for what ever his use was. This was all because of his modest work of his measurement of energy. Joule's gravestone is even inscribed with the words and phrases of "772.55," his climatic mesurement of the mechanical equivalent of heat, also a scripture from the Gospel of John chapter nine verse three and it shows exactly what philosophy he had and what kind of man he was, it says, "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: The night cometh, when no man can work." This all proves that Joule was a man of great work and took value in what he did. [10]
References
1. Welcome to James Prescott Joule's home on the web!
2. James Prescott Joule
3.Joule on geocities. com
4.Biography- hyperhistory
5.James Joule
6.Welding Years '1800s - 1900s'
7.expasion of gasses- Joule
8.www.<b>experiencefestival.com</b>/a/James_Prescott_Joule_-_Life/id/1523345
9.Nature: James Prescott Joule
10.James Prescott Joule biography
11.newworldencyclopedia/joule
12.Heating Effects: Joule's Law | TutorVista